Online things work differently than offline. In the offline world people who visit your “store” or shop are from the nearby – mostly.

They get to know you and there’s a limited supply of them. Therefore you are looking to please them otherwise your business might get some bad reputation, right?

That’s NOT how the online world works. You do NOT have to please your visitors and they do not know each other and there is an unlimited supply of them.

If today you disappoint 500 visitors because you don’t link to any sites that will IN NO WAY affect the 500 visitors that will come see your site tomorrow. You can do whatever you want with your site and future visitors have no idea what you’re doing. Who cares?

I simply don’t use many affiliate links at the beginning and then once my site is more established I add links or ads. The opinions and happiness levels of my visitors up to that point have no effect on my site or the future of it.

Another example: I see people put notices on their sites when they update their template since it takes them a while to change many pages – so at some point there are some old and some new pages. They tell people to be understanding while the whole site is updated. Who cares!

Almost NO ONE of those visitors from today will return tomorrow ANYWAY! (unless you have a forum or a blog with constant commenting going on)

The online world is different – there’s no need to be a slave to people’s opinions and moods. You can do whatever you want because there’s an unlimited supply of NEW people every day and they have no idea what happened with your site in the past nor do they care.

All they want is the information. And if they don’t get it, they will leave – same as the people who got it – they will leave too. And the next day another wave of totally new people will come and this cycle goes on forever.

Like your vacuum site, I also have a site that will be very “product” oriented. My question is, what is the best plan to satisfy the site visitor when you can’t offer them what they’re looking for…a product! Do you offer “non-affiliate” links to your recommendations and then add aff links later? How did you take on this challenge with your site?

Thanks for your help, Tony

You are SUPER fast with responses!!!! It is good to know that my problems aren’t completely unfixable. My main concern is the big ones say they will not take commercial websites submissions. Should I still apply and risk loss in money or just forget about them?

I will definitely pick up my article submissions and search for high PR5+ link exchanges. That was actually on my list to do, but I have been working everyday to fix my crappy keywords.

I wouldn’t bother with 99,99% of free directories – I tried submitting to them a few times for some smaller sites where I could track exactly the increase of rankings and traffic and there was NONE!

Submit to a few big ones if you can afford it and then just work on article submissions and link exchanges.

I can totally concur with your statement of not adding monetization too early ona product review website. It has simply killed my inbound linking strategy and slowed down my traffic progression.

I am wondering if it would be beneficial to take out all of my affiliate links to Amazon, CJ and Clickbank and then trying to go out and get links to free and paid directories that stated they would not link to commercial websites? I would then wait until your prescribed 400-500 visitors a day(I am at 80 per day) until I return my monetization.

I don’t know whether no-follow links affect the rankings.

And yes, the rankings dropped therefore the traffic dropped. They are 100% related – your traffic comes from good rankings, right?

What a fantastic post! It comes just at the right time for me.

Do you believe affiliate links that have the no-follow attribute can hurt a site’s rankings and traffic?

When you noticed your traffic decline with the site you mentioned, were you also tracking your rankings, and did they decline?

I know nothing is for sure in this game, but would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.

This Internet thing is not something that can be guaranteed with 100%. I cannot tell whether affiliate links will hurt you.

I don’t even know if they hurt me. I had one experience that suggested that but I have no proof.

You need to play the game and get more experience with it and then you’ll know with a little better probability what goes on.

But you’ll NEVER know with certainty!

My traffic has improved…I now get 75-87 unique daily visitors. I also put some adsense in some pages. But only 1 page has made me $3.28 for this month so far. I also have 2 Amazon affiliate links which I made into a nofollow.

Will this hurt my site? Because if it will, I’ll remove all monetization.

I have 54 back links now.

Thanks!

Len

great post, I have never held off monetizing but am doing this now with my new sites.

An idea for people who want to earn while holding off monetizing there site, build an email list.
Still include great content and also offer a free report.

Jeremy